Excess body fat is a significant health care issue in modern societies. Chronic health conditions promoted by excess body fat include, e.g., cardiovascular disease and diabetes mellitus type 2. Moreover, excess body fat greatly undermines personal appearance and self image.
Accumulation of fat stores can occur unevenly in the body. For example, some persons may accumulate fat predominantly in visceral areas while others predominately in the subcutaneous tissue. Gender differences may also be apparent with women accumulating fat in the thighs and lateral buttocks and males in the waist. Women may accumulate fatty deposits of the thighs, which have a rumpled or “peau-de-orange” appearance, resulting in a condition referred to as cellulite. Cellulite may be related to skin architecture which allows subdermal fat herniation, sometimes referred to as adipose papillae. Other factors that may be related to cellulite include altered and/or reduced connective tissue septae, vascular and lymph changes that lead to fluid accumulation and inflammation. Fat tissue may also accumulate in the form of a fibrous fatty deposit known as a lipoma. Utilization of fat stores may occur unevenly. Persons who have lost substantial weight may still have regional pockets of fat accumulation that are resistant to reduction unless unhealthy extremes of weight loss are achieved. Exercise may affect subcutaneous fat stores differently, with deeper tissues responding with lipolysis and superficial stores being more resistant. Cellulite may also still be present despite weight loss, and lipomas are typically not affected by weight loss.